9314 words on the maternal meets Batman

I am an artist and academic teaching Photography at the University of West London.
My visual art practice is a personal investigation of the limits of maternal subjectivity expressed through photography and video and I also write about the maternal in contemporary art practice.
I am a…Read more

3 Responses to “9314 words on the maternal meets Batman”

This piece makes me question what do you mean by ” Who wins” ? I am thinking of bat man, and super heros and super powers. Perhaps you were thinking of the pulling and tension between between mothering, work, writing and creativity, 8043, thats a lot of words that you have written. I like the absurdity of the dressing up mask lying in-between the two kitchen appliances. The toaster, the coffee maker. I am also noting the two time’s within the photograph 6:40 am and 7:46 pm: this was your day writing ? Maybe your child was playing bat man while you were writing these words.

The times and the even split of the images I’ve been making for eggwombheadmoon suggest a tidy juxtaposition of professional and creative work and domestic, childcare work but it’s not at all like that. Everything is mixed up, mothering and family takes over and expands to fill up most of the space whereas professional, creative work most of the happens intermittently and, sometimes when deadlines loom the boundaries drawn are adhered to (sometimes at a an emotional cost) and the strands, fragments and bits of practice or writing are pulled together to present something that can be mistaken as having emerged from an organised and continuous process.

Time to make art, a space when this happens then is all muddled up and mixed in with the professional, the domestic, childcare. Time as a mother/artist unfolds as circular as opposed to linear time? Its interesting what you say about the emotional cost of working to deadlines. The pull of professional work so often calls away from the demands of childcare, of the domestic. My house gets extremely messy when I feel this pull……and the children play for my attention. They get my attention, they win, the art work often gets pushed aside. This is very frustrating.